


bad missions

by imposterhuman



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, IronWidow - Freeform, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark Friendship, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Is a Good Bro, Tonynat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 15:06:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19087513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imposterhuman/pseuds/imposterhuman
Summary: The Black Widow didn’t have bad missions. Shedidn’t. She was always calm, cool, and collected, even in the face of the worst of humanity. After all, she was a product of it.She didn’t have bad missions, but the one she had just gotten home from was as close as it got. She had been sent to take down a Red Room imitation, another program training little girls to be killers. Natasha hadn’t been able to do it without casualties. Three of the little girls were killed before she could get to them. She took out her fury on their handlers, but it wasn’t enough. Their empty eyes, she knew, would be haunting her sleep.





	bad missions

**Author's Note:**

> for anon on tumblr, who wanted 24 (its six o'clock in the morning, youre not having vodka) for ironwidow
> 
> this came out a lil more gen than romantic my bad :(
> 
> enjoy!

The Black Widow didn’t have bad missions. She  _ didn’t _ . She was always calm, cool, and collected, even in the face of the worst of humanity. After all, she was a product of it.

 

She didn’t have bad missions, but the one she had just gotten home from was as close as it got. She had been sent to take down a Red Room imitation, another program training little girls to be killers. Natasha hadn’t been able to do it without casualties. Three of the little girls were killed before she could get to them. She took out her fury on their handlers, but it wasn’t enough. Their empty eyes, she knew, would be haunting her sleep. 

 

It wasn’t a bad mission, but Natasha still made for the minibar as soon as she stepped foot on her floor in Stark Tower. She didn’t know what time it was, only that the bar was stocked with her favorite vodka and she wasn’t due for debriefing for another day. 

 

Natasha twisted the cap off the vodka and chugged it right from the bottle. It burned her throat on the way down and she relished the feeling. She toasted the silent air, whispering the girls’ names to herself. It had been a long time since a mission affected her like this, and she couldn’t say she missed it. But she couldn’t say she missed being an emotionless murder doll, either. 

 

That was why Natasha never drank; it made her emotional, made her  _ weak _ . Her drunk mind didn’t have the discipline that her sober mind did, and she couldn’t keep her thoughts from wandering to Natalia Alianovna Romanova and how her eyes had looked just like those three dead little girls’. 

 

But she wasn’t Natalia anymore, she was Natasha. She was the Black Widow. Missions like this didn’t affect her. 

 

That was what she told herself as she moved to her second bottle of vodka, then her third. Her head was starting to feel pleasantly fuzzy when the elevator dinged. Despite the alcohol in her system, her reflexes were as perfect as ever. The knife she let loose sunk into the wall centimeters from the intruder’s face.

 

“Woah, Nat,” Tony’s voice wasn’t scared at all, because he was a massive idiot. “Just me.”

 

“I could’ve killed you,” she said lazily, drinking again. 

 

“I know,” said Tony, coming to sit next to her. 

 

“I still can,” she waved a knife around and closed her eyes. The bottle was heavy in her hands. “I’m good at it. The best.”

 

“Okay, that’s it, it’s six o’clock in the morning, you’re not having vodka,” she shot him a glare and he corrected himself. “Alone. You’re not having vodka  _ alone _ .”

 

“I thought you didn’t approve of day drinking,” she said, passing over the bottle.

 

“It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

 

They took turns drinking from the bottle, handing it back and forth. Tony’s alcohol tolerance was as high as hers, so he showed no sign of getting tipsy, even though she knew he was. She waited for him to break the silence; she sure as hell wasn’t going to. 

 

“Want to talk about it?” he asked finally. 

 

“You’ve already hacked the SHIELD files, you know what happened,” Natasha said quietly. “I don’t need to tell you.”

 

“Do you want to?”

 

Natasha thought about it for a moment. She wasn’t used to sharing; the Black Widow kept the things that could hurt her close to her chest, just in case. But Natalia craved comfort, just this once. 

 

“They were training girls to be like me,” she whispered, closing her eyes. She didn’t want to see Tony’s face. “I killed the handlers. I imagined they were my own again. Three-” she choked. “Three girls died.”

 

“We’ll drink to them, then,” Tony said. He didn’t offer meaningless platitudes; she didn’t want them. 

 

“It’s not enough.”

 

“Is anything?” they both drank. “You avenged them, Nat. We’ll remember them.”

 

Natasha was quiet. “This vodka is shit,” she said finally. Her voice was hoarse with unshed tears.

 

Tony laughed, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Only the best for my favorite Russian.”

 

“Am I still your favorite Russian?” she asked, vulnerable. It was a joke, they both knew it was a joke, but she had to know that this, her moment of weakness, hadn’t changed them.

 

“Oh, Nat,” Tony leaned against her as she built her walls back up. His hand in her own was a warm and welcome weight. “Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos make me happy!
> 
> hit me up on tumblr @imposter-human


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